Vestibular Training by Alex Keramidas

Poetry by Alex Keramidas

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In her poem-zine Vestibular Training, the Italian-Greek poet Alex Keramidas evokes Grecian scenes that, whether desired or not, become frictional palimpsests of past trauma extending back to disrupted infancy, ballasted by present-day emergence in settings that hold forth the promise of solace.

“Only the dry fountains are left…”

Things “making appearances” in Keramidas’ sempiternal scenography might initially strike one as memorably motionless. And yet blossoms on rocks are touched; a marble staircase shifts; an archaic flag flaps; polka dots crash. And herbs cause quite a stir.

Throughout, there is an element of idiomatic tag, with a thought traced back and forth through a warren of Greek, Italian, French, and English (Alex’s fourth language) as the poet navigates her tongues and selves in an attempt to turn lingual knots into lanyards.

There is, too, “sage and rosemary on the nearby hill / (noisy, noisy herbs).”

The zine’s cover art is by Rowena Hughes. Potentially sentient undulant elasticity. Such unhurried rapidity.